26 Thursday Nov 2020
Together we made
a band of misfit angels,
plenty just so, plenty
with wonky arm and lumpy belly
and jagged wing,
together.
Together,
we rolled butter-based dough,
floured marble pin,
hand chasing hand, little and big,
together.
Oven warmed kitchen
and laughter warmed hearts,
kinda doesn’t get better
than a band of misfit angels
together.
23 Monday Nov 2020
And if God moving in us is
n o t h i n g
like we expect?
Not sublime or transcendent or ethereal,
but exactly the unrelenting pains and grief,
the dark slogging through what we hope
to shed, be done with and grow beyond?
If that confusion is the way
and all that separates us from God
is our rejection–
If then . . .
what?
09 Monday Nov 2020
This is not stick feathers in your hair and prance round
the earth as if you are one. You
couldn’t not be if you tried. You
can, however, think it, feel it, behave it as if
it were so. You aren’t here
to earn it. To remember it, Yes,
and to work it through.
Mass microbes work upon you–feathers
are the cartoon version (blessed though they be).
If no brook bubbles beside you, neighbors’
televisions blare craftless tales, and your mother
is dead, Remembrance,
work though it must and will take,
is what these days reaching toward your own death
are for..
Slow into morrow, into marrow..
not only could you lose everything–
you will.
With that might your cellular awakening bring glimpse
before the end
Gold of what you are made.
25 Sunday Oct 2020
I’d like to sit in the room
there with that pajamaed boy upon his knees,
crumpled blankets and bed beneath him,
staring out windows into the dark,
to sit silently with him
wherever he may be.
Not to pluck the darkness from his sight or sorrows,
his fears or confusion,
for he needs the darknesses,
they feed him as much as light.
And Heaven knows he must gather experience
and knowing
and skill continually grappling with both.
Both, ever both.
Here, it is an All sort of existence.
May it be that he (and you, and I and they)
feels what it is like
to be he, only he, and to sense
that that being is more
than even a growing imagination
can conjure
in vast nights silently sitting, and
finally with darkness
not alone.
04 Thursday Jun 2020
A big moment arrives,
likely without your (intentional) bidding,
when no Golden Key arrives.
You swear you aren’t looking for one,
assure others you know there isn’t one,
and yet?
Yet, when you open that door
none appears.
And everything comes up short.
Where is your way through?
Surely, following such pain and strife,
with the endless effort and hope,
some
Thing
will
raise its head and wag a greeting
of arrival.
Because your faith needs food.
Instead, you are told
humanity is a shithole
with moments of beauty between.
And how that isn’t trauma added
to the heartbreak is beyond you.
Because Faith needs not only Beauty
but connection.
Not unending loss
and rage,
but nutrients for the lost souls and
the begging souls who try,
try,
try
for a beautiful life founded on self-respect
and a worth unquestionable,
unquestionable by color, origin, belief,
or day alive navigating a difficult and messy
and Beautiful world.
Finding the faith within to keep on
may be the magic
all of us seek.
06 Wednesday Mar 2019
Launching from plush chair
to a seat below
and beside me
on the wool carpeted floor,
he comes closer.
Our talk bounces
ping-pongs
even spins some
between now and then–
the surprisingly many shared thens.
As his broad hands, accustomed to touch
in work, in nature, on board, on bow,
brush and pet, across and across again,
beneath and atop, thick warmth of blanket
upon which I sit,
I almost speak his unspeakable–
Why not bring your hands to the warmth of my flesh,
as they keep wanting,
and carry the rest of you right along with.
These inches between us
aren’t the turbulent ocean of your imagining.
05 Tuesday Mar 2019
If the book leaves you in tears,
consider it a friend.
What can’t salt water wash away?
A central gripping has
kept me off-kilter,
winter storms filling gutters and feeding
blue mold.
In a sense,
nothing is going as planned–
precisely how this melting,
sanding, scuffing and lonesome roll
is meant to go.
As the slow unfurling tightens me into
a speedy withdrawal,
reminders trickle in to soften,
a kitten-stretch of a soft pawed
softening,
when I can.
More friends,
words heaping page upon page,
sit kindly waiting nearby
in a generous pile.
13 Wednesday Jun 2018
Aching back, pounding head,
weakening eyes, softening memory,
anger, nightmare, spasm..
Symptoms.
What loves to be complained about
over tea, through the phone,
aloud aloud somebody hear this, oh please.
Imagine turning attention around,
bear chewing his tail-
Wake to me!
Symptom becomes lotus
opening
from murky waters into light.
Manifestation of inner
to outer,
an offering
a medicine
a gift.
Pain is not for pain’s own sake.
With suffering,
we alter to listen.
Awareness reaches up,
roots down,
grows.
06 Sunday May 2018
An initiation ritual,
in the dusk-scape of dream,
of shared finery, costume, camaraderie,
and non-blood family
emerging from here, over there,
here, here, there
unexpectedly,
for the me before me,
with a gathering of eager others,
to mark time with life.
Saying no, no but I am not she
not anymore
no–
But as beads pass over head, and colors add up,
layers of feather, bone, cloth
none mine
each display on this body
currently
a light in mind shifts-
not for me
but she
who may pass through, closing
beginning years, finally,
in step with those knowing when it is meant to happen.
Dressed, prepared, without doubts,
I walk the procession.
To celebrate.
To say goodbye.
To welcome all the rest.
20 Monday Nov 2017
Wanting to know what satisfies
an ancient hunger you’re not even certain is yours,
countless streets, endless questions,
bottomless pans, and tears of frustration
over a lifetime
have added up to a hillock of humus,
dark, fertile, and remembered.
The sought after whatsit, the toil of time and love,
may or may not ever amble up to you,
paws dirty with devotion.
The wanting filling your carved out places,
a blue, swirling smoke scented from the beyond,
is itself required elixir
drawing you deeper into life.
Cursing that desire away, and aimlessly trying to fulfill it
means trading your own gold for dull, already forgotten tin.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 